She frowned at him. “You’re not turning me in to Internal Affairs?”
His expression was deliberately blank. “For what?”
“And Mitchell?” she asked, caution warring with giddiness. “Will he talk?”
“Leave Special Agent Mitchell to me,” Grant replied, eyes narrow.
Gratitude washed over her. “Thank you,” she said, reaching out to grab the front of his shirt. Ignoring the pain in her side, she pulled him close for an impulsive hug. “Thank you so much.”
While he tolerated her embrace, only a little less stiffly than he had before, she noticed the outline of another figure standing in the hall.
Grant lifted his head, following her gaze.
Instead of coming in, Ben hesitated outside the doorway, a gift-store bouquet of flowers in one hand and a wary expression on his handsome face.
As Grant straightened, he looked back and forth between them, understanding and acceptance in his intelligent gray eyes. Sometimes he knew her better than she knew herself. “You aren’t going to be working with me much longer, are you?”
Tears welled up again. “No,” she whispered.
If he was disappointed, he didn’t show it. Maybe this was what he’d hoped for her all along. To love herself, and someone else, enough to want to live past the age of thirty. “DeGrassi’s looking for an FBI liaison to San Diego Homicide.”
She swallowed. “You would approve of the transfer?”
He nodded slowly. When she leaned forward to hug him again, he held up a hand. “Please. Your young man already wants to rip me to shreds.”
Laughter bubbled from her throat. She was so happy, her ribs didn’t even hurt. With one last good-bye and a respectful nod at Ben, Grant was gone.
“Can I come in?” Ben asked.
Sonny leaned back against the pillows. “Of course,” she said, making a murmur of thanks when he set the bouquet on the nightstand. “How’s James?”
“Fine,” he said with a snort. “Eating pudding.”
“And Carly?”
“Won’t leave his side.”
She smiled at his affronted tone. After Carly’s near-death experience, Ben probably wanted to hold his daughter close, but Carly was more interested in making eyes at James. Her knight in shining armor. “What about Stephen? Is he still here?”
“Yes,” Ben said, running a hand through his disheveled hair. “He’s in the lobby, shivering. They offered him a sedative but he wouldn’t take it. I think he’s detoxing.”
Sonny wondered how long her half-brother’s sobriety would last. Getting clean was a hard row to hoe alone. “Maybe you could sponsor him.”
“You mean, pay for rehab?”
“That would be nice, but he might be too proud to accept your money. It wouldn’t cost anything to take him to a few meetings.”
Ben appeared to consider the idea, and although he didn’t make any promises, neither did he refuse outright. “You didn’t tell me you were hurt,” he said, changing the subject.
“Bumps and bruises,” she claimed.
He didn’t believe her for a second. “I’ve had broken ribs before. You won’t be able to take care of yourself.”
“Are you offering to nurse me back to health?” She’d been playing coy, but when he nodded, his eyes dark with intensity, her heart swelled with love for him. “It just so happens that I have some leave time,” she said. “I’ve been thinking I’d like to laze about on the beach for a few weeks, admire your cutback.”
He wasn’t fooled by her lighthearted banter. “Is that all we have? A few weeks?”
“Actually, I-”
“Never mind,” he interrupted. “It doesn’t matter.”
She blinked in confusion. “It doesn’t?”
“Not really,” he said, meeting her eyes. “After Olivia died, I’d have given anything to have one more day, one more hour, one more minute with her. I don’t want to make the same mistake with you.”
Warmth tingled in her belly. “Are you sure?”
He took her by the hand, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles. “Yes. I don’t like the idea of you risking your life, but I can’t ask you to give up your job. I couldn’t give up mine. So we’ll work around it. I’ll visit you in Virginia whenever I can.”
“You would do that?”
“Of course.”
She stared down at their entwined hands, her body humming with anxiety. Putting her heart on the line was the scariest thing she’d ever done. “I’m going to request a transfer.”
“You…what?”
“I’m leaving my position at VICAP,” she clarified. “No more undercover work.”
“Why?”
Taking a deep breath, she said, “I guess I found out some risks aren’t worth taking. Not when I have so much to lose.”
His brown eyes softened with understanding. With his dark hair hopelessly rumpled and worry lines creasing his forehead, he was still the handsomest man she’d ever seen. When her vision blurred, she blamed it on the medication. It also must have been responsible for her clogged throat, the heavy lub-dub of her heartbeat, and the swelling in her chest.
Because neither of them was able to speak, she reached out to him, lifting her hand to his face. He sank to his knees at her bedside, giving her easier access, and wrapped one arm around her, very gingerly. She threaded her fingers through his hair and brought him closer to her, grabbing handfuls of happiness and holding it tight.
CHAPTER 26
Sonny pulled into the parking lot at Neptune Apartments, exhausted from the red-eye flight but giddy with anticipation.
Over the past few weeks, she’d slept too little and worked too much. Her lovely plans to recuperate on the beach, lazing about in the warm sun and admiring Ben’s cutback, had been thwarted by cold, hard reality. As soon as she was cleared to fly, she’d been whisked back to Quantico. Wrapping up a serial murder case was a meticulous, time-consuming process, and because of her involvement with every step of the investigation, her input was essential. Requesting a transfer to San Diego, giving notice to her landlord, and tying up the loose ends of her old life were also tasks that required hours of attention.
Now that she was free, unencumbered by the past and finished with her position at VICAP, she should feel as light as the ocean breeze that rifled through her hair as she walked toward Windansea Beach. Instead, she was stiff-limbed and awkward, her palms clammy and her pulse racing. Anxiety curled up in her belly like a lead ball.
Ben didn’t know she was coming.
It wasn’t as though she hadn’t talked to him on the phone every night before she went to sleep. He’d told her how Carly was doing and given her updates on her half-brothers. James had enrolled in La Jolla Shores High School and Stephen had been staying clean, working on the Destiny and attending NA meetings.
Over the phone, things between them had been…friendly. Heated, even. But they hadn’t exchanged an “I love you” since that last tumultuous evening together.
The press had had a field day covering the case, and John Thomas Carver became America’s favorite new monster. He might have enjoyed the attention if he’d lived. Every detail of his past was exposed, including his father’s drug overdose and his mother’s sordid lifestyle.
Although JT rarely spoke of his mother, he’d given Ben the impression that Cheryl Carver, better known as Cherry, had been a B-movie actress. She was actually a porn star who’d been strangled by her boyfriend when JT was fourteen. Perhaps her death had been his breaking point, or maybe that time came years before, during the incident that had precipitated JT’s transfer from his mother’s care. When her house was raided for drugs, two uniformed officers found her ten-year-old son unconscious, tied to a bed, naked but for lipstick smudges and candle drippings. Apparently, a couple of Cherry’s doped-up girlfriends had made a game of him, and after they grew bored, they left him there, used up and forgotten.